The Boston Celtics defeated the Denver Nuggets 107-103 on Friday to kick off the 2023–24 NBA preseason schedule, marking the league’s third consecutive year of travel to the Persian Gulf. This battle featured the two most recent championship teams.
On Sunday, the two-game series between the Celtics and Nuggets will conclude in Abu Dhabi.
With the exception of Luke Kornet, Boston rested four of its five starters after halftime, while Denver rested its starters in the second half. Together, the teams used 36 players, or 18 per team.
For Boston, Payton Pritchard scored a game-high 21 points, making 20 of 61 shots from three-point range. The three Olympic gold medalists from the Celtics that competed in the summer Olympics in Paris, Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, and Jayson Tatum, combined to score 25 points, and Jaylen Brown had eight for Boston.
Denver’s Nikola Jokic, the current NBA MVP, scored 14 points. In his debut game with the Nuggets, Russell Westbrook scored twelve, Michael Porter Jr. scored twelve, and Jamal Murray, who was wearing street clothes on the bench by the end of the game, scored three points in fifteen minutes.
In 2021, the NBA inked an agreement with Abu Dhabi tourism officials to bring teams there for preseason tours; Dallas and Minnesota visited last year, and the series began with Milwaukee and Atlanta in 2022.
In addition to using Abu Dhabi as a training ground for the 2023 Basketball World Cup in the Philippines and the Paris Games, USA Basketball has played there in each of the last two summers.
(AP)
